Maybe we'll make it after all
by ekc293
Summary: 'There's nothing familiar about it at all.' A past!fic written in collaboration ion with the lovely, beautiful, totally amazing writingace s.


**Olivia (writingaces)**: So I haven't written a damn thing in ages despite the fic suggestions and nudges from lovely people. Partially because my brain is in "I hate words, so fuck off" mode, and partially because Emily is fantastic at fielding any and all fic suggestions, and writing amazing stories at the insistence of me and the aforementioned lovely people (did y'all notice and appreciate my sneaky baseball pun? DID YOU?).

Anyhow, writing with Emily was either going to end with us murdering each other, or quitting, or just saying "I dunno, how do you wanna do this?" over and over again until quitting or murdering each other. Instead, this happened. Which is pretty damn cool. #proudofus

**Emily**: I told Olivia when we were trying to decide if we wanted to write this that I think we're both pretty selfish writers, which is actually really fantastic because we both know where we see our stories going and what we want out of them and how to get there, and we both started off with the disclaimer that we didn't know how good we were going to be at this whole collaboration thing. Well, we're still friends, and I still love her to pieces, and this got written in a matter of hours so... yeah, #superproud

(and we all _know _how I feel about Jim Beckett)

* * *

It's awkward.

She thought that this would help - that the familiarity of baseball games with her dad would help them fix what they'd broken, that sitting in that stadium watching their favorite team would magically take them back to a time where there wasn't a _need _to be fixed.

She was wrong. There's nothing familiar about it at all.

She's sitting next to her dad, Matsui's batting stats up on the board as he stands in the box waiting for whatever pitcher the Mets had decided to put in as a relief. The Yankees are losing, badly. They keep making errors in the field and they're _not _the team she knows and she shakes her head because no that is _not _a metaphor.

They can fix this. The _Yankees _can fix it. They can pull it together.

She's barely focusing on the game as it is because she's sitting next to her dad at Yankees stadium like they'd done so many times before and it's awkward. Not because she's getting ogled by 40 year old men by wearing shorts that were too short, not because the Yankees were losing. It's awkward because she thought that this would fix them. This is the first time she's sat down with her dad for more than 5 minutes since he dragged himself to rehab. It's the first time she's seen him since he got out 3 weeks ago and all of this was such a bad idea. They're barely talking, hardly even looking at each other and she doesn't know how to handle it.

Matsui strikes out looking and the other Yankees fans around her groan in disappointment. She remembers sitting out in center field when she was 17 - she'd bought her dad tickets for his birthday. They were losing then, too. And then Bernie Williams came up to bat in the bottom of the ninth and hit a walkoff homerun straight into right field. She remembers how her dad jumped up, her mom, too, and they hugged for a minute before Jim turned to her with a smile, gathered her up in a hug and lifted her off the ground as the crowd went crazy around them.

As much as Kate wishes that she could fix it through the magic of nostalgia, it simply was not working. The Yankees weren't fixing this. This was nothing like the games she had sat through as a kid or a slightly huffy teenager. She couldn't relax. Couldn't pay attention to what was happening on the field because all she could notice what just how much it smelled like beer. Beer and hot dogs and sweat, but mostly beer.

She hasn't been this aware of how strong the scent of stale beer could be since that time her first semester of college when she woke up the morning after a party and thought her favorite leather jacket must have taken a bath in a tub full of PBR.

The assumption on her part was that bringing him to a Yankees game as an attempt to regain some of their former cheer that hadn't been present since before her mother's murder and her father's alcoholism. To say that assumption was wrong would be a gross understatement. Because in her overzealous quest to relive the best parts of her childhood (which, now that she thinks about it, was possibly an subconscious attempt to fulfill her own selfish needs), Kate had neglected to remember that sitting in a baseball stadium on a hot day in June meant that the tens of thousands of excited fans were more or less drunk out of their minds.

This was not what she wanted to be focused on. She didn't want to be hyper-aware of the fact that the group of 40 year old men ogling the length of her shorts had just loudly declaring that they wanted another round. She didn't want to know that her Chuck Taylor clad feet were sticking to the ground mere inches aways from her father's.

She didn't like how different all of this was. In the five years that had passed since her mother was killed and everything had gone to hell, nothing was how it used to be. Every one of the Becketts' carefully crafted traditions were tainted with the absence of Johanna.

She had really, really hoped that, at the very least, baseball games with her dad might have stayed the same.

But it's not the same. It's not the same because her mother was murdered and her dad became an alcoholic and there's talk around the precinct and Montgomery's been hinting that they're looking at promoting her to Detective and that's a huge deal. She'd be the youngest woman in the history of the NYPD to ever make Detective, and she wants to tell him, she wants her dad to be proud of her because she's working so hard but she's afraid. She doesn't like to admit it and she doesn't admit it often but she's afraid and on edge and she can't even think about work at the moment because seriously this place smells like a brewery.

She feels a hand on her knee and she tenses for a moment before she hears his voice.

"Katie, relax."

She doesn't, she can't, her shoulders too tense and the scent far too strong. She looks over at him, her face guarded, but he sees right through it.

"I'm okay, Katie."

She nods once, but she knows her eyes betray her when she sees her dad's face fall. And it kills her, she wants to fix it but she doesn't know how.

She's heard it all so many times before.

Her father takes his hand from her knee and leans back in his stadium seats the Yankees hustle off the field after getting the third out (seriously, when did that happen?). He swipes his hand across his face, breathes in deeply and exhales just the same, letting his eyes fall shut for a moment before he looks at her with a small smile.

"I'm better, Katie. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to go back to it."

"You don't know that," she whispers. She hates herself for it but she can't take it back, and she watches how his gaze sharpens, his eyes flashing with determination for only a moment before it settles back into an almost serene stare.

"I do know it," he replies, "There's nothing there for me."

She goes quiet for a moment, thinking about all the times in the past when she found him in a bar or got called to pick him up. Royce had told her that people drink because it's the only thing that could numb that pain, that alcohol becomes the only thing they could control, the only constant. It had helped.

"I don't understand," she finally says.

Jim sighed again, clasping his hands in front of him with a quiet clap as his shoulders hunch forward. It struck her suddenly that he'd gotten so old since her mother died, that she'd been forced to grow up but he'd been forced to grow old. He looked it now. The burden of the past sits on both of their shoulders. It weighs them down.

She's just better at hiding it.

"There's nothing there for me," he says quietly, "because all I need is here."

He pauses for a moment before he reaches over again and grabbed her hand. She let him and he looks over at her, staring imploringly at her, trying to make her understand.

"There's nothing there for me," he repeats, "because you're here. I just need my daughter," he squeezes her hand tightly, his eyes starting to shine, "I'm so sorry, Katie."

She hates herself for the way her eyes immediately filled up. She wasn't going to cry, not here, not at a Yankees game with her father holding her hand. She swallows, squeezes his hand tighter in hers as she forced the words out of her throat.

"I'm sorry, too."

All around, there is an abrupt explosion of noise. Fans jump up, clapping and cheering, and Kate distinctly feels some beer slosh out of the cup in the hand of the man behind her and onto her tshirt. She stands and glances around in confusion just in time to see the ball sail over the blue wall.

The Yankees were still losing, and the game was still far from over, but they had a hit.

There's a light pressure on her shoulder as Jim turns her away from the field and wraps his arms around her in a gentle hug.

"We'll get there," he assures her.

She steps out of the hug to look at him, and answers him with a quiet confidence that draws small but real smiles from both of them.

"We will."


End file.
